The rumours stem from Tae-Hyun Cho, CEO of Averatec – a firm that’s previously launched laptops, UMPCs and satnavs — after he recently said in an interview with Cnet that the firm’s upcoming netbook will be “a merger of cell phone and PC technology”.

Android’s already made the jump from a mobile phone OS to a PC OS – just look at SkyTone’s Alpha 680 – so the natural assumption would be that Cho's comment refers to the Google-developed OS.

But he kept the mystery going by refusing to confirm or deny exactly which operating system its unnamed netbook will feature. “The OS is going to be a surprise,” Cho said.

Precious little else is known about the mystery machine, but Averatec’s CEO added that the mystery machine will be launched – hopefully worldwide – in August or September. ®